If you haven't visited the Microchip forum recently, they have
'upgraded' to ASPPlayground.NET Forum Trial Version 3.5 which has
basically trashed the whole forum. There are too many problems to list,
but the main ones are: message display is badly broken as is the search
function. If you are logged in, its worse: in most browsers any
sourcecode previously posted wont display at all, all formatting is
broken and and editing existing messages is 99% of the time totally borked!

I am just hoping that - worst case - this group can become an emergency
rendezvous for the forum community!

Yes, I just read your post over there (via the non-working link on the
welcome page) and here I am!

Actually I've noticed the intelligence level of Usenet has gone up lately
since many major ISP's have dropped it. Seems to be getting back to the way
it was in the late 80's when only universities and research sites had
access.

As to the Microchip forum, what has happened is a disgrace! I can't believe
a large company like that would install such a piece of crap. Is someone
being too tight with the purse strings? Who? Perhaps they need to hear from
a few of us...

...
Tell me about it ;-) Unfortunately I am currently arguing with my ISP
as their traffic shaping blocks all USENET access, even on 3rd party
servers during peak traffic periods! :-O

This group is currently low traffic and if there is any significant
amount of spam here it almost never escapes my filters. If we 'move in'
here its a win-win situation, both for us as Microchip PIC users and for
the group so long as we accept and welcome users of competing
microcontrollers. Hopefully the sense of community would transfer over.

Unfortunately I agree totally. Unfortunate because a USENET poster
frothing at the mouth is never a pretty sight . . . . I believe I have
already made my feelings clear back on the Microchip forum and hope to
be more positive here.

At least this group wont mangle any snippets of code posted! The lack
of attachments can be got around by linking to external hosting services
but we need to be careful to pick ones with a good reputation, that
hopefully will remain stable and are easy to sign up for.

The problems are mostly resolved. Anyone who 'bailed out' during the
last week should try the Microchip Forum again. Its much better with
all the essential functionality back up and most of the 'pretty stuff'.